Well, I'm the developer of the Toilet mini game. We've been doing some investment with Facebook Ads, but it was definitely a 'viral' phenomenon (as its fun to call nowadays) since we're hardly spending that much money.

It has done well by the time we released its last year, but gained a lot of strength after we pushed it a bit in strategic countries in Europe to influence nearby markets.

Eventually we started climbing the ranks in the UK and now we're doing quite well in the USA -- currently #3 Top Free Games and #4 Top Overall Games. A bit of luck. Oh, and the game is not that bad as well (maybe a little gross for some).

Awesome @felipewatanabe nice too see a regular around here getting some success! So your promote in smaller countries idea worked out eh? Mind sharing income stats enjoying that top spot? x,xxx? xx,xxx?!

Well, I'm the developer of the Toilet mini game. We've been doing some investment with Facebook Ads, but it was definitely a 'viral' phenomenon (as its fun to call nowadays) since we're hardly spending that much money.

It has done well by the time we released its last year, but gained a lot of strength after we pushed it a bit in strategic countries in Europe to influence nearby markets.

Eventually we started climbing the ranks in the UK and now we're doing quite well in the USA -- currently #3 Top Free Games and #4 Top Overall Games. A bit of luck. Oh, and the game is not that bad as well (maybe a little gross for some).

Great.. finally we know it is not bots or illegal techniques.
But how the 'viral' phenomenon start? Did you get featured by Apple?

@mediaspree It did! But it was a very special case, I think. The 'toilet' theme was good. We felt from the beginning that it had some (awkward) appeal, it was just a matter of finding a good strategy to make it noticed by some people and then generate an organic/viral growth based on curiosity. I confess I wasn't really expecting it to do that well. We're currently in Top #2 Overall Free Apps. As for the numbers, I can't disclose the exact figures, but it's a big deal in volume of downloads. US App Store is BIG in comparison to other markets.

@mooki The game performed really well by the time we released it, it could definitely be considered a 'hit' already. Since we knew we had something worth working on in our hands, it was mostly a matter of planning well how to leverage it. I'm not expecting it to climb the rankings in all countries or remain in the top for so long like Flappy Bird or 2048, but I'm really proud to make it this far already.

@raymng No features from Apple for this game specifically. It simply caught attention in almost every country we give it a little push by cross promoting or advertising on Facebook. It's worth mentioning that cross promotion is key for us since we have over 100 games by now.

EDIT: And personally, this is my favorite thing about all of this (haha):

I'm the developer of Ironpants which was top #1 overall in US and in many other countries. I can also confirm that the key factor of our success was virality and luck. We did not even use any single keyword of Flappy Bird to get noticed, but it just went viral through Twitter, Youtube. People wanted to compare Ironpants with Flappy Bird so they just tweeted to their friends: "Hey, look, Ironpants is even harder than Flappy Bird. I dare you to try it!". So people tried our game out of curiosity, wrote funny, ironic reviews, uploaded youtube videos and it went from mouth to mouth.
We did not spend anything on marketing. Our Google Play version was live a week before we launched on iOS and had 10ish downloads a day. But after iOS version came out, it went viral and downloads peaked in all platforms.
I cannot even imagine, what the marketing budget should be to acquire users to get to the top #1 overall.

So guys, it's possible! No budget needed, no bots, no fake reviews - just funny, simple app. I would say that these type of games work like a "meme". Once people notice it, make fun of it, share - it goes viral.

@mediaspree It did! But it was a very special case, I think. The 'toilet' theme was good. We felt from the beginning that it had some (awkward) appeal, it was just a matter of finding a good strategy to make it noticed by some people and then generate an organic/viral growth based on curiosity. I confess I wasn't really expecting it to do that well. We're currently in Top #2 Overall Free Apps. As for the numbers, I can't disclose the exact figures, but it's a big deal in volume of downloads. US App Store is BIG in comparison to other markets.

@mooki The game performed really well by the time we released it, it could definitely be considered a 'hit' already. Since we knew we had something worth working on in our hands, it was mostly a matter of planning well how to leverage it. I'm not expecting it to climb the rankings in all countries or remain in the top for so long like Flappy Bird or 2048, but I'm really proud to make it this far already.

@raymng No features from Apple for this game specifically. It simply caught attention in almost every country we give it a little push by cross promoting or advertising on Facebook. It's worth mentioning that cross promotion is key for us since we have over 100 games by now.

EDIT: And personally, this is my favorite thing about all of this (haha):

Well, I'm the developer of the Toilet mini game. We've been doing some investment with Facebook Ads, but it was definitely a 'viral' phenomenon (as its fun to call nowadays) since we're hardly spending that much money.

It has done well by the time we released its last year, but gained a lot of strength after we pushed it a bit in strategic countries in Europe to influence nearby markets.

Eventually we started climbing the ranks in the UK and now we're doing quite well in the USA -- currently #3 Top Free Games and #4 Top Overall Games. A bit of luck. Oh, and the game is not that bad as well (maybe a little gross for some).

btw, do you mind to share a little about how to get people to review apps ?

@comiccreations Our game designers love WarioWare! I'm sure they took it into consideration and also had in mind some similar games that did well lately like Dumb Ways to Die and those "dumb tests" mini games. They're very addictive indeed.

@258076067 We had absolutely nothing to do with all those videos coming up about Toilet Time, they're all spontaneous. This is the most successful one so far (192k views as of now), from a big Brazilian YouTube channel:

We use Chartboost ad network both for interstitial ads and cross-promotion of our other apps. These guys are real professionals, their system gives all the needed information, it's possible to make direct deals with advertisers, so I am really happy with using their service. Cross-promotion is really strong tool as it brings us a decent number of users and at the moment we are cross-promoting through our other apps only.